McAree: ‘We all cheated the club’

COLERAINE manager Rodney McAree cut a frustrated figure after watching his side fall to a defeat at the Brandywell…

The Bannsiders were largely second best throughout and paid the penalty at the end as Aaron Jarvis bagged a late winner for ‘Stute.

Speaking after the game, boss McAree had no complaints with the result.

“It was an honest result and I am the one who leads the team,” he said.

“When you are getting paid a wage you should be earning it, no matter how much you get you have to earn it and that did not happen today.

“From my point of view we have all cheated the club and the supporters and we have put in a level of performance which is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.

“The result comes a week ahead of our biggest game of the season so it is extremely disappointing and from my point of view, I can only apologise for the display.

“It was a very long 93 minutes and it is not one which will live long in the memory.”

McAree believes a few players were looking ahead to next weekend’s fixture against Crusaders, but refused to cite that as an excuse for the defeat.

“I think players had one eye on the Crusaders game but it is important that you look after the game you are in,” he added.

“Next week might not happen for some of them and there are key players missing today and that performance has opened the door for them to come back in again.

“Institute fully deserved to win they caused us problems in the first half.

“The direct ball over the top hurt us and we could not deal with it and we were poor defensively.

“We offered very little going forward because we had one shot on target from Josh Carson which was a tame enough effort.

“It was one of those days were you think the players were focused on next week but as I said it might not happen for some of them.”

The manager also explained that he left out a few members of his starting eleven as they are close to a suspension.

“I hope the players learn from their mistakes and that this does not happen again,” he concluded.

“It is very hard to recreate a goal like Institute’s in training because it was farcical.

“It was a case were Cormac Burke is not available next Saturday and we had to leave Aaron Canning, Stephen O’Donnell, Jamie McGonigle and Adam Mullan out as they are near a suspension, so I wanted to try and put some outlook on next week.

“Maybe it was not the right thing to do but it is important that we had a bit of focus on the Crusaders game as well.”